Greenville In New Zealand we were asked, “How is New Orleans?” In California, whether Santa Rosa or Sonoma, the question arose, “How is New Orleans?” Thirteen years have passed since Hurricane Katrina swept through the city, and the question is still important, “How is New Orleans?” The answer: better than it was, but not as good as it needs to be.

That’s not a whine, just a statement of fact. Another new Mayor is now in charge, our first woman, an African-American again, and our first non-native born in a long, long time. There’s hope mixed with thirteen years of cynicism. Too many plans have been made without enough progress.

The big local television station reached out for ACORN’s affiliate, A Community Voice, so that they could dig deep into the lingering impacts felt by one of their leaders, Gwen Adams. They wanted to tell the story through a personal lens, but her organizational t-shirt cries out about how political this is. Gwen lives within a spit of the levee in the lower 9th ward. She was a union teacher in the New Orleans Public School System. She was fired like thousands of others, and despite the fact that she was a former Teacher-of-the-Year in Orleans Parish, she was never offered a return to work. She was also unwilling to go to work at lower pay, forfeited retirement and other benefits, and no job security or protection for a charter operator. She is now a sometimes substitute teacher. She is a great ACORN and ACV leader. These are the facts.

The facts are also being reckoned with in Puerto Rico almost a year after the island was slammed by Hurricane Maria. The governor there actually apologized, which is a refreshing surprise. He also announced that the death total is now estimated at near 3000 people compared to the earlier estimates that were hardly one-hundred. In the same report, the news story mentioned that the death total from Katrina is still not known absolutely. The governor noted that they had no disaster plan that assumed no power, no highway access, and no communication. George Washington University in the District of Columbia has been doing a study for them, but it is hard to believe there will be any surprises.

A spokesperson for the Milken Institute argued that the lesson of Puerto Rico is “focus as much as possible on lower-income areas, on people who are older, who are more vulnerable.” A survey from Kaiser Health Foundation and others in Texas in the wake of Harvey found that the same populations were still suffering there. We all thought that was also the lesson learned from Katrina thirteen years ago.

When are we going to be willing to really act on the lessons we keep being taught after disasters? No one seems to know – or act on – the lessons we keep being forced to learn at the price of suffering and death.

Little Rock Perhaps the best news in the nine years since Katrina has been that we have not faced another devastating hurricane, as the city continues to struggle to rebuild. We had a bit of problem a couple of years ago in 2012, but not so severe that it forced widespread evacuation or extensive damage. Every year that we can get past Katrina is another gift.

Surveying the changes over nine years isn’t easy. Many of the positives come with big, fat “buts.”

Like the fact that population in the metro area is now 93% of what it was before the storm, but in the city itself we are only 78% of where we were before Katrina. The Census Bureau estimates New Orleans’ population at 378,715 compared to the 2000 Census population of 484,674. That’s still 100 grand down, and that’s not good.

We’re growing, yes, but people still can’t find their way home, especially African-Americans.

The Census Bureau estimated 99,650 fewer African Americans in 2013 compared to 2000, but also 11,494 fewer whites and 6,023 more Hispanics. African-Americans still represent the majority of the city’s population at 59 percent, down from 67 percent in 2000.

All of which means we are becoming more diverse, even while we have so many “missing New Orleans.” We gained 44,281 Hispanics and 6,564 additional Asian residents. The Hispanic population in the metro spiked 76 percent between 2000 and 2013, a rate greater than the nation’s 53 percent growth.

So the city fathers that wanted a “whiter” city, didn’t get their wishes, even though their policies barred return for so many. They also didn’t get a richer city because of their continued programs.

According to The Data Center’s figures:

While the poverty rate in the New Orleans metro declined from 18 percent in 1999 to 15 percent in 2007, it then increased to 19 percent in 2012, such that it is now statistically unchanged since 1999. In New Orleans itself, the 2012 poverty rate of 29 percent is also statistically the same as 1999 after falling to 21 percent in 2007. Like the overall poverty rate, child poverty in Orleans Parish and the metro area dropped in 2007 but has since increased to its 1999 levels. In 2012, the child poverty rate was 41 percent in the city and 28 percent in the metropolitan area, both higher than the U.S. rate of 23 percent.

No small reason for the continued poverty and stalled return continues to rest on the problem of inadequate and unaffordable housing, because of the double whammy of first the storm and then the recession which rolled back credit availability and made home reconstruction unaffordable for many low-and-moderate income families. Rents soared after the storm and continue to be sky high. The Data Center finds that “36 percent of renters in the city paying more than 50 percent of their pre-tax income on rent and utilities in 2012, up from 24 percent of renters in 2004.”

The beat goes on like that.

We did better on jobs and jobs on recovery after the storm than many cities in the recession, but the jobs didn’t pay diddling, especially when so much of the income went for housing. Higher education is lagging, especially for African-American men, and the charter school experiment has not moved the needle on failing schools. New businesses are up, but so are sales tax revenues and other taxes servicing a smaller population, so many of these businesses are marginal. We have more bike lanes and bike trails but can’t seem to fix the potholes in the streets.

Here’s the story in New Orleans. We’re going to make it, but every day is still going to mean a struggle over a bumpy road. We’re going to come back somehow and we’ll welcome all the new people, but we can’t escape the heartache for people we miss, who still can’t make it home.